This invention relates to a means for controlling both the liquid and grain supplement consumption of livestock, e.g., cattle and other animals.
In the past, open troughs containing liquid feed, have been extensively used for the feeding of domestic animals such as cattle. This method, however, enables the animal to eat at will and this can result in overfeeding of the animal. Further, the animal can allow a great deal of the liquid to be wasted by permitting it to drop on the ground adjacent the trough, thus resulting in the attraction of insects, flies, etc., and may result in contamination of the feed adjacent or on the trough. This, in turn, can lead to disease in the animals feeding from the trough.
In order to eliminate some of these problems, enclosed feeders have come into use, primarily for cattle, which feeders employ an enclosed liquid container with one or more rotatable discs or wheels dipping into the liquid feed. A portion of each of the wheels is exposed above the top of the enclosed container. As a cow licks a particular wheel, the liquid feed is picked up by the periphery of the wheel and is carried upwardly by the wheel to an exposed position above the container. See, for example, the patents to Reed, U.S. Pat. No. 3,459,159 and Teske, U.S. Pat. No. 2,158,093 and Teske, U.S. Pat. No. 2,158,094. The devices shown in those patents do not, however, really solve the problem of overfeeding of the animal because the animal can continue to lick the wheel and obtain, in reality, any amount he desires.
The apparatus of this invention not only more positively controls the liquid supplement consumption in a simple economical and efficient manner (while minimizing contamination and wastage problems) but utilizes the controlled amount of the liquid feed supplement as a basic means of controlling the grain supplement fed to the animals.
Coordinated feeding of both liquid and grain supplement utilizing the cow itself, as the power source, is a major object and achievement of the present invention.